Rooftop
by CurlyMustache
Summary: My take on an alternate ending for Reichenbach. Very, very subtle Johnlock.


This is actually an assignment for school and I didn't think I did too bad on it (lol it's terrible)... I dunno. Short ficlet. You don't have to like it or anything and I already know I suck so my insecurities are all in check. Underlined words were vocab words - I'm in seventh grade, people, don't patronize me about weak vocab words - that I'm too lazy to go through and un-underline. Enjoy.

Or not.

**Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in:**

**Rooftop**

**(Alternate ending to season two. All characters belong to BBC/Moffat and I do not in any way claim them to be my own.)**

"Lestrade," John began as he came up to the police chief, "what was the case that you wanted to give to us? Me, I mean. The dead twins in the old Hollumbach's candy factory?"

Greg Lestrade turned away from the large cork board that was easily twice the man's size. The cork held scattered pictures of escaped criminals, possible murder suspects, and missing victims. They were all tied together with a cluster of color-coordinated strings. Greg stared at John wearily. The exhaustion on his face from work and overexertion was glaringly blatant.

"Where's Sherlock? Shouldn't he be going with you?" Lestrade furrowed his brow in confusion at the lack of the apathetic man that always stood by John's side – or, rather, John stood by his.

"No, sorry," John answered, "Sherlock is busy working on another, uh…" John trailed off, searching for the right word, "'project'. One that involves severed limbs. No surprise there, I suppose. It's just one of the many occupation hazards for a detective."

Lestrade shook his head but he was chuckling. He handed John the file that contained the investigation's details and informed him, "Anderson and Donovan are already at the scene so you'll have to look over it on the ride there, alright? Get going." With that, the police chief turned back to the board rather abruptly and began to mutter to himself quietly. He seemingly enumerated many different facts as he tried to piece them together in his head and come up with a motive for some other case.

John left and managed to hail a cab on the busy streets on London relatively easily, which should've been his first sign that things were a tad off. John slid onto the polyester seat and was surprised to find a girl he knew all too well yet knew nothing about sitting in the seat next to him. John moved to unlock the door and get out. He was stopped when the car pulled away from the sidewalk curb quickly, putting a halt to his escape. John slumped back in his seat with a frown.

"Mycroft could always call my cell phone. I have one of those, you know. He doesn't have to kidnap me all the time," John's tone was caustic and cutting despite the fact that he knew the woman opposite didn't much care if he was upset or not. John had expected no reply from her, so he was surprised when she retorted.

"Mycroft isn't the one kidnapping you," she murmured, eyes flickering across her phone's screen as she read another text message.

John briefly deduced that he had two options: one was to jump out of the moving vehicle with the chance of being mauled by another one in the process and the second was to sit back and accept his fate. He chose the latter.

A sick feeling had begun to manifest in his stomach, however, as he hesitantly asked, "Is there any use in trying to get you to tell me who it is that's kidnapping me this time? Or if there is any possibility I could escape?" John surprised himself when he managed to speak and not have his words crack or tremble. He received no response from the woman so he slumped down in his seat further than he already had and forced himself to enjoy the ride.

"There's no chance I could get your number, is there?" John asked wistfully. The woman glanced up at him.

"As _if_," she replied haughtily. John had figured as much.

…

_Come and play, Sherlock. Meet me on St. Bart's roof or risk your friend's life. –JM_

Sherlock received the text late that night while he was lying quietly on the sofa in the living room, hands forming a steeple against his chin. He admittedly had a nicotine patch – okay, two nicotine patches – on his arm to help him think. When his phone buzzed he assumed it was from John and ignored it much like he always did. It was of no importance to Sherlock at the moment; he was too busy thinking.

Half an hour later, another text was sent to his phone.

_John's sobbing, Sherlock. Please hurry. The game is never much fun without you. –JM_

Sherlock was snapped out of his trance when he heard his phone buzz for a second time within the hour. He grumbled quietly to himself, grabbing his phone from the coffee table, a poignant reply to the annoying man already beginning to form in his head. He stopped short when he saw that it had in fact not been John who had texted him. In a second he was in his coat and out the door, waving a hand for a taxi. He practically snarled the destination to the cabbie and when the cabbie refused to trample every other car in traffic in order to get to the hospital and called Sherlock, "bloody insane" for even suggesting the idea, Sherlock jumped from the cab and ran – without paying.

He was out of breath when he reached St. Bart's and banged through the front door. Nurses at the front desk glanced at him but the detective was a familiar sight and they paid him and his odd actions no attention. He bolted to the elevator and jabbed the button. When it didn't open in exactly .2 seconds, Sherlock cursed and ran to the stairs, taking them two at a time.

The muscles in his legs were on fire, he had an aching stitch in his side, and his lungs were threatening to collapse by the time he finally reached the roof.

"John! Moriarty, stop! Please!" the detective implored, breathless, his pupils blown wide with fear at the sight of John Watson and his enemy standing on the edge of the roof. An old fashioned Dillinger was pressed to John's temple and an arm was wrapped around his neck to keep him still. The expression on Jim Moriarty's face was nothing short of giddy.

"Sherlock Holmes!" Jim yelled in glee and hopped off the edge, back onto the roof with John still in his grasp, "Oh, I've been waiting for you! I wasn't sure you would come. You took so long. John insisted you'd rescue him, though. You're such a martyr, Sherlock. It surprises me," Jim chimed, his mouth spread in a grin.

"Moriarty, I don't know your game, but –," Sherlock was cut off by the other man's hoarse bark of a laugh.

"Don't be so demure, Sherlock. I know your talents. Why, it's hard to miss when you flaunt them about. You know perfectly well what I want," Jim murmured. The quick fluctuation in tone and mood only added to the evidence that Jim truly was a bipolar sociopath. John made a muffled sound of panic when Moriarty cocked the gun and pressed it even closer to the man's temple. It was a warning for Sherlock to play by the game's rules before it ended in a way that the detective wouldn't like.

Moriarty suddenly threw his head back and laughed, "What an unorthodox ending, Mr. Holmes. Listen to this; it's going to be the headline tomorrow! 'The saint refusing to give his own life to save his friend's: a story on Sherlock Holmes, the fake sleuth'. His only friend's life, I may add. I'll spare you the embarrassment and leave the fact that you only have one friend out of the headline, though. No worries."

While the madman was speaking Sherlock had inconspicuously slid his iPhone from his coat sleeve and tapped out a text behind his back to Lestrade before tucking the phone back up his sleeve and out of sight.

_I'm going to need you at St. Bart's ASAP. Bring an ambulance. –SH_

"You want me to kill myself? To complete your story and make everyone truly believe that what I am is a lie?" Sherlock asked. He was biding his time carefully but he could see how white knuckled Jim's grip on the gun was. He needed to get John out of the situation and quickly. He knew Moriarty's tricks and he knew the trump card that he would try to pull. He would end this before Moriarty had the chance. He had known it from the start. The man opposite of him truly believed he could outdo him, the amazing Sherlock Holmes. He was a silly fool.

"You don't have to kill yourself," Jim muttered before he tossed John aside roughly and held the gun at Sherlock with a steady, unwavering arm, "I can do that for you."

"Oh, but you won't," Sherlock spat back at him, his lip curling slightly. The tension on the roof, which had already been tight, had increased tenfold at that moment.

"You won't because you need me. I am you," Sherlock glared at the man holding the gun as he made his way toward him. These were empty words but Sherlock found himself hearing the truth in them regardless of whether he wanted to or not.

With every step forward that Sherlock took Jim took one backward. A brief shimmer of uncertainty flashed across the sociopath's features. It was gone as soon as it had arrived and the back of Jim's knees hit the brick edging on the roof. The barrel of the gun pressed into Sherlock's chest, right below his heart. Sherlock's eyes narrowed.

Sherlock was close enough that he could smell the stale stench of liquor on Moriarty's breath as it wafted up toward him.

"Do it," Sherlock egged him on, toying with him now, "I know, Moriarty. There was no trick to you getting a hold of the crown jewels. You didn't do anything special to get into the bank. You didn't use a code to unlock the prison cells. You didn't need a code for any of it! You were trying to lead me on. I need nothing from you anymore.

"If you're gone, who's to say that the story about me being a fake will be published?" Sherlock said with a sickly smile. A crowd of five or six people had grown below. The all pointed up at them. The grandeur of it all – his victory – made Sherlock chuckle. He had beaten a mind as great as his own. Perhaps he was as crazy as Moriarty.

"We go together," Jim muttered and tossed the gun off the side of the building. Sherlock had milliseconds to find out what was going on before he was grabbed by the shoulders and began to fall.

Sherlock's world slowed when he made eye contact with Moriarty and saw the man convey more to him, Sherlock, in his last few moments of life than he had to anyone. In Jim's pupils Sherlock saw a child who never had a father. He saw a child who grew up alone. He saw a child who knew he was brilliant and aged with the belief that his knowledge and deduction skills he could get him anything he wanted. He saw a child who grew into a covetous man with a rotten heart who wanted everything but really just needed a tie to reality. Sherlock felt pity for Moriarty. Pity was something that Sherlock Holmes hadn't felt in a long time.

The shared glance was short lived, though. Sherlock felt his ankles being grabbed by a firm pair of hands, followed by two more pairs of hands pulling at his jacket. Jim continued to fall the long flight of seventeen stories. A cacophony of screams erupted below but Jim made no noise as he fell. He had lost to Sherlock in a game that he had initiated and this was the price. Sherlock refused to look away from the concrete below. He heard people saying his name behind him – Lestrade, Donovan, John – and he was pulled further from the edge, away from the carnage below.

Everything was blurry and Sherlock wondered why before he came to the realization that there were tears in his eyes. He thought about how uncharacteristic and completely human it was of him. He wiped them away before anyone could see.

John saw, though. Later he would ponder the fact that Sherlock cried over the death of Jim Moriarty, his arch enemy, and dwell on it. He would ask himself if maybe Sherlock Holmes was a sociopath. He would decide the answer was yes and he would also be forced to realize that he didn't care. Sherlock was alive and wherever Sherlock was would be where home was. John silently observed the detective. He settled on the fact that if he thought that home was where Sherlock was, that he himself must be a sociopath as well.


End file.
